SingSong is karaoke with a twist: the game tracks the notes the players sing and scores them against the notes they are supposed to be singing.

Some key features:

* Sing scored karaoke with ANY song in the world.* Supports any number of simultaneous players (limited only by the number of microphones).* Players singing at the same time can sing different lyrics (eg, a duet or lead/backup vocals).* Powerful tools to quickly add support for new songs.* Java, so cross platform: Mac, Linux, Windows

Because I know someone will mention it, similar games exist for the PS2, PS3, Xbox360, etc. These games have a limited track listing or make you buy songs from a limited selection at something like $1.50 each. There is also an open source PC game called UltraStar that does pitch detection. SingSong differs by having more game play features that these other games, more accurate pitch detection, and the ability to use any song in your digital music library.

I haven't tried it yet, but the features and screenshots look excellent. Great job. I have been looking for something like this for a while. I want to learn to sing, but don't have time for singing lessons and this software is exactly what I need. Now as soon as I can afford it I will buy it.

CaptainJester, I'd be interested to hear if you think you improve by singing with the game. I'm definitely better than I was when I started developing the game, though my wife still stomps me almost every time.

I'm concerned you guys were unable to download the songs. What OS and version of Java are you running? Can you post your JWS log? To turn it on go to Java settings (on Windows: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Java) and on the Advanced tab check Settings/Debugging/Enable logging. Then run the game again and look in "user.home/Application Data/Sun/Java/Deployment/log" for the latest log file.

Sorry this is such a pain, it is supposed to log to "user.home/.singsong/singsong-game.log" but it looks like it just creates an empty file. I'm guessing I can't redirect System.out when running through JWS.

Heh, I'd have to at least have a way to turn that off. People get upset when you start sending even harmless info without their knowledge. The game isn't supposed to be in beta... It is definitely supposed to work!

I got it running on my machine. No problem downloading a song either. The only problem I had was that it froze my machine. This is not your programs fault. I am having the same problem with almost any game that uses OpenGL/DirectX calls into my video card. Up until that point it worked fine.

Can you tell me what graphics calls you are making? Anything beyond normal like CG or GLSL?

Orangy Tang, what version of Java (including update number) are you using? I found Java 1.5u16 specifically to be jerky. Doesn't seem to happen in Java 6.

Ultrastar copies SingStar. SingSong is nothing at all like SingStar. IMO the SingStar interface, while closer to a traditional karaoke machine, does a poor job of conveying information.

The current UI is a first milestone. I wanted to get it working and out there else I might not have ever gotten it out there, given my past track record with releases. I hope to build upon it in the future. I do think the scrolling lyrics style is the best way to go, so I don't see that changing, but more effects are needed along with a tournament mode, party games, etc.

FWIW, I fixed the jerkiness in SingSong a while ago. The OS and/or audio hardware on some computers doesn't update the playback time very often, so scrolling was jerky. I now do some magic based on the system clock and smoothly transitioning to the playback time when it changes, since playback may actually be faster or slower than real time.

This was great fun, and worked very well! Despite sucking at singing I did pretty well. Featured!

+1 point the game installs and uninstalls correctly+1 point the game doesn't crash ever+1 point the game is slickly presented+1 point the game has "good" graphics that suit the game+1 point the game has "good" sound that suit the game+1 point the game's overall style is "good"+1 point the game is original or brings a great new original twist+1 point your judge enjoyed playing the game+1 point you don't whine and you demand nothing of the mods (simply saying "can you rate my game please" is fine)

9/10.

I didn't give you a "+1 point if the game is complete enough that doesn't feel anything is missing" because having to manually download mp3s felt really segmented from the game itself and didn't seem like something I should have had to do. Obviously the reason you did this is because of rights, but it forced the game to not feel nearly as complete. I clicked a song to play and the had to find it on my computer, where of course it doesn't exist. That's a little tough, plus because it needs mp3s I can't play anything I bought from iTunes. So basically I need to steal it or rip it from a CD, neither of which are good options. Can you do anything about that? I don't think so, unfortunately.

To play the free songs it has to download them, otherwise the JWS would take forever (3mb game + 10 free MP3s @ ~3mb each = 33mb!). By "manually download mp3s" I assume you mean that you have to choose your own song file to play one of the three commercial songs (Eric Clapton, Madonna, Gloria Gaynor)? Yeah, no way around that. I didn't originally have any commercial songs, just the free ones, but I found people wanted to try it out with songs they know.

FWIW, the full version of the game uses some fancy fuzzy matching to search through all your music and find songs the game supports. This way you don't have to manually choose each song. It supports 300+ out of the box, so chances are you have a few supported songs. Also you can add support for new songs yourself using the provided tools.

The game supports MP3, OGG, FLAC, and APE. These are all decoded using pure Java. If you have QuickTime installed then it will use that to play M4A, M4P, M4B, AAC, MID, and WAV. This means you can use music purchased from iTunes, even DRMed music, with SingSong.

Wow, I didn't know it supported all those options. That's pretty awesome, great work there. And yeah, I meant the Madonna etc. tracks. Having a little load time for the music as it is downloaded is really not a big deal at all, and makes sense to me. I wouldn't really want to have all those songs stored on my hard drive, either.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org